Tony Hoare

Sir Tony Hoare (2011)

Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare (born January 11, 1934 in Colombo , Sri Lanka ), better known as Tony Hoare or CAR Hoare , is a British computer scientist .

Hoare gained a high reputation for developing the quicksort algorithm and the Hoare calculus , which can be used to prove the correctness of algorithms . Hoare also developed the process algebra Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP), which, for example, influenced the development of the programming languages Ada , Occam and Go .

biography

Hoare was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka to British parents. In 1956 he finished his humanistic studies (Classics) at Oxford University with a bachelor's degree.

This was followed by a year of graduate studies in statistics at Oxford before continuing to study computer-aided translation of human language at Moscow State University . In 1960 he started working for the small computer manufacturer Elliot Brothers with the implementation of Algol 60 and the first algorithm studies. In 1968 he received his habilitation at Queen's University Belfast and returned in 1977 as a professor of computer science at the University of Oxford.

As an expert in programming languages and their reliability, Hoare publicly opposed the use of Ada in security-related areas such as the control of nuclear missiles in 1981 because he considered Ada to be fundamentally unreliable. If a programming language produces unreliable programs in such a context, it may be more dangerous for a society than unsafe cars, toxic pesticides or accidental leaks in nuclear power plants.

Sir Antony Hoare is now Professor Emeritus at Oxford University and Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge , England.

Awards

In 1980 he received the Turing Award for his fundamental accomplishments in defining and developing programming languages.
1985 Faraday Medal (IEE)
1989 Full member of the Academia Europaea
1997 Corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences
In 2000 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor ("Sir").
In 2000 he was awarded the Kyoto Prize .
2007 Friedrich L. Bauer Prize
2011 John von Neumann Medal
2017 External member of the National Academy of Sciences

Quotes

“I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. "

“I find that there are two ways to create a software design, either so simple that it obviously has no weaknesses, or so complicated that it has no obvious weaknesses. The first method is far more difficult. "

- Tony Hoare : acceptance speech for the Turing Prize 1980

"I think Quicksort is the only really interesting algorithm that I've ever developed."

"I think Quicksort is the only really interesting algorithm I've ever developed."

- Tony Hoare

Fonts

Assertions, A Personal Perspective . In: Manfred Broy, Ernst Denert (Ed.): Software Pioneers - Contributions to Software Engineering . Springer, 2002, ISBN 3-540-43081-4 ( abstracts and more - the accompanying DVDs contain a video of Tony Hoare's lecture).
An Axiomatic Basis for Computer Programming . In: Communications of the ACM . Vol. 14, No. 1 , 1971, ISSN 0001-0782 , pp. 39-45 , doi : 10.1145 / 363235.363259 .
Proof of a Program: FIND . In: Communications of the ACM . Vol. 12, No. 10 , 1969, ISSN 0001-0782 , pp. 576-580, 583 , doi : 10.1145 / 362452.362489 (reprint in the above-mentioned book Software Pioneers ).
Towards a theory of parallel programming , in: CAR Hoare, RH Perrott (Ed.), Operating systems techniques . Proceedings of a Seminar at Queen's University Belfast 1971, Academic Press 1972, pp. 61-71
Proof of Correctness of Data Representations . In: Acta Informatica . Vol. 1, No. 4 , 1972, ISSN 0001-5903 , pp. 271-281 , doi : 10.1007 / BF00289507 (reprint in the above-mentioned book Software Pioneers ).
Communicating Sequential Processes . Prentice-Hall, 1985 ( PDF version ).
Retrospective: An Axiomatic Basis for Computer Programming . In: Communications of the ACM . Vol. 52, No. 10 , 2009, ISSN 0001-0782 , p. 30-32 , doi : 10.1145 / 1562764.1562779 .

Web links

Commons : Tony Hoare - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Literature by and about Tony Hoare in the catalog of the German National Library

Videos by and about Tony Hoare in the Technical Information Library AV portal

Tony Hoare, Oxford University ( Memento August 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive )

Short biography at Microsoft ( Memento from October 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

^ Pearce Wright: Defense computer language unreliable, professor says in The Times, July 1, 1981
^ Membership directory: Charles Hoare. Academia Europaea, accessed November 25, 2017 .
↑ Knights and Dames: HA-HOR at Leigh Rayment's Peerage
^ CAR Hoare: The Emperor's Old Clothes . The 1980 ACM Turing Award Lecture. In: Communications of the ACM . Vol. 24, No. 2 , 1981, ISSN 0001-0782 , pp. 75-83 , doi : 10.1145 / 358549.358561 .
↑ Len Shustek: An Interview with CAR Hoare . In: Communications of the ACM . Vol 52, No. 3 , March 2009, ISSN 0001-0782 , p. 38 ff ., doi : 10.1145 / 1467247.1467261 .

personal data
SURNAME	Hoare, Tony
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Hoare, Charles Antony Richard (full name); Hoare, CAR
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	British computer scientist, developer of the Quicksort algorithm and the Hoare calculus
DATE OF BIRTH	January 11, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH	Colombo , Sri Lanka

[1] Pearce Wright: Defense computer language unreliable, professor says in The Times, July 1, 1981

[2] Membership directory: Charles Hoare. Academia Europaea, accessed November 25, 2017 .

[3] Knights and Dames: HA-HOR at Leigh Rayment's Peerage

[4] CAR Hoare: The Emperor's Old Clothes . The 1980 ACM Turing Award Lecture. In: Communications of the ACM . Vol. 24, No. 2 , 1981, ISSN 0001-0782 , pp. 75-83 , doi : 10.1145 / 358549.358561 .

[5] Len Shustek: An Interview with CAR Hoare . In: Communications of the ACM . Vol 52, No. 3 , March 2009, ISSN 0001-0782 , p. 38 ff ., doi : 10.1145 / 1467247.1467261 .